About

Howdy!

I Am Kyle Bondo.

I Have One Goal:Helping You Build Better Races.

I started Reckoneer as a simple blog idea focused on writing about the mechanics of off-road and endurance sports.

I wanted to break into the sports media world by highlighting sports that I love and do: mountain biking, orienteering, trail running, backpacking, adventure racing, kayak/canoe paddling, shooting, climbing, and everything in between.

As I grew my list of articles and expanded my knowledge, I started to lean more and more into teaching event management techniques.

This was an attempt to take what I had learned and put it into practice for myself.

However, what I discovered was that most people fail at race promotion so often that many quit before they ever become profitable.

Why is that?

Over and over again I meet current (and former) race promoters who talk to me about their struggles.

They too found out that race promotion is not a job that magically creates the well-orchestrated experience most racers demand on race day.

Instead, what they found was how unprepared they were, and how much real race promotion required concepts like strategy, process, and planning; All things they had to learn AND be proficient in long before any race day ever materialized.

In the last minute panic to get something built, they crushed their race under an avalanche of uncertainty; often ending their flirtation with race promotion with little to no financial reward to show for it.

That’s when it hit me.

I had uncovered the secret to why most race promoters fail.

Nobody is teaching new and established race promoters how to be successful when it comes to the business of outdoor recreation sports.

It wasn’t a lack of initiative or understanding of the sport. It had everything to do with the lack of race promotion education.

Like with any business, the business of race promotion has certain rules, market forces, and strategies unique only to it.

Ignoring any of these elements will cause any race promotion business to certainly fail.

However, if no one every told you what those things were, how would you know you didn’t know?

So who has dropped the ball on this problem?

Unfortunately, most established education is geared towards massive, multi-million dollar, professional sports, while most outdoor recreation-based sports are ignored.

There are no universities or colleges making outdoor recreation sports a part of any sports management curriculum.

Additionally, those that do care about outdoor recreation sports, mainly the national governance associations, have never been successful in creating a certification process that works.

Their certifications serve as a check-in-the-box and then go unused by those required to obtain them.

Certifications that are never used, but without the cert, you face punitive regulations.

Pay-to-play requirements that only benefit the organization issuing the certification.

The truth is that most race promoters have learned their trade via trial-and-error.

Unfortunately, this method produces poor results.

So it’s time to stop the insanity.

I started my journey to become a race promoter as a racer. I built my events using trial-and-error, learning how to not do it, over and over again.

The trial-and-error methodology failed to make me any money too.

The university route into sports management taught me how to manage a football stadium.

And every certification I obtained turned out to be fund raising review of highlevel race topics.

Where do you go for training when nobody is teaching?

Simple. You open your school for off-road race education.

So that’s what I did.

I’ve taken everything I’ve learned from managing races through trail-and-error, and hammered out lessons, strategies, and tools that work.

The result is Reckoneer – a school for recreational engineering – that teaches you how to build better races.

Reckoneer is the culmination of my journey through the hard slog of existing race promoter education and expressed in my call to action:

Give back to the outdoor and off-road recreation sports community by teaching a better way to build races.

My hope is that what you learn here will help you become a better race promoter, race director, or race organizer.

So, if you’re tired of trying to get by with bad tutorials, bad training, and bad strategies, you are not alone.

There is no “secret guild of race promoters” you have to belong to if you want to build races that actually makes money.

Anyone can become a race promoter, and I can show you how.

Welcome to Reckoneer!

I will teach you how to build better races.Let’s get started today!

Build Better Outdoor Events with Recreational Engineering

Reckoneer, the leading resource for outdoor industry event planners, has been partnering with race directors and event managers since 2012. As a veteran-owned, event planning and marketing company, Reckoneer supports an extensive portfolio of off-road races, outdoor programs, and endurance sports companies with strategy, logistics, and contingency planning.

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Reckoneer, the leading resource for outdoor industry event planners, has been partnering with race directors and event managers since 2012. As a veteran-owned, event planning and marketing company, Reckoneer supports an extensive portfolio of off-road races, outdoor programs, and endurance sports companies with strategy, logistics, and contingency planning.

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We're passionate about outdoor companies and the strategies, logistics, and contingency thinking that goes into building a successful event. If you have any questions, comments, or need help planning your next event, please reach out to us on Twitter at @merchantsofdirt.